Animal Sheltering: Doing it Wrong
Your doing it wrong (ur doin it wrong) is probably my favorite LOL Cats caption (capshun!). It popped into my head this week when I read about Roger Booth and Dallas, Texas animal control.
Roger Booth made headlines this week when, not having the $132 fee to reclaim his pet cat, he left only to come back to the shelter weilding a bat and a carrier and took his cat back.
You might think “ur doin it wrong” applies to Roger, which it definitely does to an extent but I have to wonder where the priorities are for the shelter? For many years we have blamed the public for the killing of animals in shelters and this belief has become so ingrained that it has painted a picture of all pet owners as unworthy even when the infraction that lands their pet is as simple as being loose.
Roger knew clearly that the shelter where his cat had ended up was a deadly place to be:
“I didn’t want to go to jail, but I didn’t want my cat to die, either. I took the chance because I didn’t want him to die for ridiculously high prices.”
Roger had a clear, preconceived notion about this shelter. He firmly believed that the safe return of his cat was not a priority of this shelter’s staff.
When I first started working at an urban animal control shelter it was obvious to me as well that safe return of animals to their homes was not a priority. The hours that a person could reclaim a lost pet were hopelessly set in the middle of the day and anyone arriving after 4pm would just have to come back the next day despite the fact that shelter staff manned the front window until midnight.
Can you imagine arriving at the shelter knowing your pet is there and being told that reclaims aren’t done after four pm? Worse yet if you came on the evening before a holiday you would have to wait until the day AFTER the holiday before you could take your pet home?
Getting back to Roger and his cat…
Now I know that there are those of you who are thinking that, well if Roger can’t afford $132, he shouldn’t be owning a cat. That is definitely one of the mantras of the animal welfare movement. Let me clue you in on the fact that Roger is suffering from stage IV prostate cancer. His money is currently stretched by hefty medical bills.
The working poor, the non-working persons on fixed income, the disabled, the elderly … these are people who need assistance not hinderance to reclaim or keep their pet. A compassionate animal services organization can still have fees and recognize that fact. Dallas even offers free pet sterilization for people in need! While one city service is providing aid - the other is turning a blind eye.
I bet I couldn’t pry your pets from your hands if you fell on hard times… especially if there was an easy option to assist you in keeping them such as reducing or waiving a reclaim fee.
Let me also point out that his cat was wearing tags with his phone number engraved but yet he received no phone calls about the whereabouts of his cat. Isn’t that what we ask shelters to do so that we can reunite lost pets? Isn’t it shelters who send that message?
But even before the information of his medical condition was made public, the response from people hearing of his plight was an outpouring of offers to pay the fee for him. After learning that the fees were paid by a donor he was grateful and relieved.
“Thank you very much. Look at this face. How could you put a needle in him and kill him?”
To me this is clear evidence of the compassion and support the shelter has yet to tap into. This incident has only continued the impression of animal control as a negative force in the community. It also begs the question, what does this mean for good pet owners who loose their animals when an animal control shelter neglects its role of reuniting lost pets in favor of an enforcement model lacking in compassion?
To me that’s gets a definite: ur doin it wrong.
5 Responses to “Animal Sheltering: Doing it Wrong”
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Absolutely *brilliant* piece Sue.
It’s just heartbreaking to think that Roger felt this was his only option and that he’s had to turn himself into a criminal to save the life of his companion.
Why can’t we seem to see that in order to ‘help the pets’ we absolutely have to ‘help the owners’?
[...] Animal Sheltering: Doing it Wrong Now I know that there are those of you who are thinking that, well if Roger can’t afford $132, he shouldn’t be owning a cat. That is definitely one of the mantras of the animal welfare movement. Let me clue you in on the fact that Roger is suffering from stage IV prostate cancer. His money is currently stretched by hefty medical bills. [...]
Re: the mantra, “if Roger can’t afford $132, he shouldn’t be owning a cat.” What does “can’t afford a cat” even mean? If Roger’s cat wasn’t starving, then it was eating. If poor people want to care for animals, who the heck are sanctimonious shelters to say that the animals should be killed instead?
I thought of this just the other day as one of my neighbors, obviously low-income, told me about having to “lay down” her ailing, formerly feral, diabetic cat who had an acute stomach infection. The cat needed emergency treatment and would need ongoing care for the diabetes — if it survived the episode, in which it was already suffering and in pain. The cat was 11. 11.
I say 11 good years and euthanasia in a touch-and-go situation that even someone with money might have opted out of is better than early death at a shelter.
I agree wholeheartedly that even a few years with a good family who may not be able to afford high vet care bills in some distant future is better than killing an animal now in the shelter … all because most people don’t seem to be “good enough” to live up to the standards most animal-welfare agencies set up. Those standards are part of the gut reaction and mythology created by the industry as a result of some horrible, often ISOLATED incidents that don’t speak to the reality that the majority of normal, decent people live through. I own 6 animals, and there were times I was struggling to make ends meet after some layoffs from work, and I was only giving them low-cost vaccinations at that time and praying they would not fall ill, but I loved and cared for them well. When bad things did happen, my family stepped up to lend me money for vet bills, but not everyone has that kind of help. Now that I can afford better, I do better for them and spend thousands a year now on ver bills. I hate to say this … but, the animal-welfare industry needs to get past the often elitist viewpoints it upholds. I agree that euthanasia can wait for a later date … there is no excuse for the killing now to avoid what the future might hold.
I just found this: http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSTRE4AN5O220081124?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews. Man upset over his pet’s death “in a public welfare center” in Japan, stabbed two people.